Product encasing machines such as that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,191,222 can rapidly produce wieners or sausages at a rate of up to 30,000 encased units per hour. These machines fill an elongated casing with meat emulsion, create links in the filled casings, and discharge the strand of linked casings onto moving hooks of a conveyer such as that shown in FIGS. 19 and 20 of said U.S. Pat. No. 3,191,222. The deposit of the encased and linked product is effected by a looper horn located on the machine downstream from the conventional linking mechanism.
Prior art looper horns are disclosed in said U.S. Pat. No. 3,191,222, and others such as U.S. Pat. No. 3,694,853, where the looper horns comprise an enclosed tubular conduit eccentrically rotatably mounted on the discharge end of the machine, and which deposit loops of encased products on moving hooks of the conveyer as the looper horn rotates.
One of the shortcomings of existing looper horns is that their shape and eccentric mounting requires that the strand of encased product is forced to travel in an uphill direction through the horn at least during a portion of the rotational cycle of the horn. The friction created by this uphill travel slows down the movement of the strand, and causes it to back up in the linking chains for the linking means. This uphill problem also makes it virtually impossible to hang short sausages in a large loop.
A further problem of prior art looping horns is that the strand of encased sausages cannot escape quickly enough from the looping horns. This "bottle-necking" of the strand seeking to leave the looper horn also contributes to the strand backing up into the linking chains. This backing up phenomenon will momentarily stop the flow of sausages until the looper horn is in a position to continue filling the loop size. In short, the existing looper horns cannot always successfully loop the encased linked product on the conveyer at a speed equal to the speed by which the machine can generate the linked products. This is particularly true of longer sausages or wieners.
It is therefore a principal object of this invention to provide a sausage encasing machine with a looper horn wherein the looper horn will not ever require the strand of linked encased products to move in an upwardly inclined direction as the strand passes through the looper horn.
A further object of this invention is to provide a sausage encasing machine with a looper horn wherein the looper horn will be able to rapidly discharge the linked strand of encased product and successfully drape the strand on the hooks of a moving conveyer at a speed compatible with the speed by which the linked products are being generated.
A still further object of this invention is to provide a sausage encasing machine with a looper horn thereon that can equally accommodate linked product of varying lengths and diameters.
A still further objeot of this invention is to provide a sausage encasing machine which can create loops of encased linked products of uniform size.
These and other objects will be apparent to those skilled in the art.